Management of Environmental Effects Workbook for Pork Production

There are two goals for this workbook:

1. Buy answering the questions, producers (and council officers) get an indication of current environmental performance. These answers have an associated score, which is averaged at the end of each section to give a guide for buffer distances for that group of activities.
2. To provide a step towards an Environmental Management System (EMS) for pork producers, helping them to prioritise the farm activities in terms of requiring improved environmental performance.

Potential benefits could include:

• Understanding and managing the risks associated with the environment.
• Ensuring council and neighbours are aware of the current standard of environmental stewardship.
• Making sure the farm will continue to be maintained at a high environmental level indefinitely (improving/maintaining property value?).
• Providing a systematic and adaptable approach to managing sometimes complex systems.
• Easing the application for the resource consents process. As part of resource consent applications, it is required by law for the applicant to complete an assessment of environmental impacts. By filling out this workbook, the producer has effectively identified most of these impacts.

How It Works

1. The Workbook is split into three main sections; ‘Feed and Transport’, ‘Collection’, and ‘Application to Land and/or Water’.
2. Each page has a description of one activity. There are then a number of questions to answer dealing with the management of this activity. These questions are answered by choosing the word that best fits the actual management of this activity on-farm.
3. There may be some activities or management strategies in this workbook that are not used on a specific piggery. If this is the case, the ‘NA’ option should be used.
4. All three sections must be answered. Once finished, two summary pages will be produced that show the appropriate buffer tables for each stage and activities that may affect land and groundwater quality. These activities should then be ranked by the producer

Introduction to Effluent Management

Effluent is defined as including both the solid and liquid excreta produced by pigs. This also includes the straw or sawdust used for deep litter bedding. It should be noted that, in line with the definition in EnviroPork, ‘effluent’ becomes ‘manure’ when applied to land. This distinction is important, in that when applied to land pig manure can provide significant benefit to the soil and pasture/crop both as a fertiliser and a soil conditioner. There are potentially three stages effluent goes through on a piggery in New Zealand (see flow diagram, see link below):

Stage 1 - Feed and Transport

This includes the different systems of feeding the pigs as well as the disposal of carcasses. This stage effectively deals with the way pigs digest feed and water and what affect this has on the excreted material.

Stage 2 - Collection

This stage describes the processing and/or storage of effluent so that it can be applied to land and/or water at the appropriate time. This may include solids separation, biological treatment, storage/composting of solids and carcasses.

Stage 3 - Application to Land and/or Water

Once the effluent has been processed and/or collected, most New Zealand farms then apply the effluent back to land as manure in either liquid or composted solid form. There are also farms that apply manure fresh (within 24 hours of flushing out of the buildings), bypassing the second stage.

Download the Effluent System Diagram.(PDF 18KB)

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